Microsoft buys Blizzard

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felter
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Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by felter » Tue, 18. Jan 22, 20:07

HOLY, MOLY, BATMAN. Didn't see this one coming. Microsoft are to buy out Activision|Blizzard for $68.7bn (£50.57bn). The bad news Bobby Kotic is to be kept on as CEO which I personally think is a bad move, I would not hesitate to dump him. One thing I do hope this helps the staff of Activision|Blizzard and all the crap they have been going through. I just wonder if Microsoft know exactly what they are taking on by keeping Kotic in charge.
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Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by Cpt.Jericho » Tue, 18. Jan 22, 20:09

Microsoft means business. Seems like after buying Bethesda they still are hungry and bought Activision Blizzard.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... aming-deal
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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by exogenesis » Tue, 18. Jan 22, 20:50

For about $7,000,000 per employee !

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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by chew-ie » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 14:45

Let's just hope this will end before they buy Egosoft. While loosing Blizzard to MS is of no interest to me, loosing GitHub was [/is still] devastating *shudders*

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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by Alan Phipps » Thu, 20. Jan 22, 15:13

@ chew-ie: Really? Wouldn't you think these forums pages would look great with Edge-style adverts, useless discount vouchers, 'popular' news items of no real interest, and random product pushing? You know it, you really would! 8)
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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by Stars_InTheirEyes » Fri, 21. Jan 22, 00:48

I'm worried about the monopolisation of the industry, to be honest.

Its not the first time they've behaved in such a way. I remember when Microsoft were fined many millions by the EU for bundling software with Windows that made it unnecessary to buy others'. Not that it changed anything.
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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by matthewfarmery » Fri, 21. Jan 22, 14:03

That was the IE browser, as EU forced MS to strip that from I think windows XP or was it 7? but still, it didn't really change much. And here we have MS trying to buy out all the competitors. Its bad enough that we have Epic and its trying to buy out games and make them into exclusives. It feels that the gaming market is getting squeezed. And to me, that is just really bad. We see from experience that too few competitors can drive both prices up, quality goes down and worse. For example, UK broadband, Good example BT, last winter, they decided to drive up the price for broadband up to £40 a month. While other providers were half that. (give or take) However, they had to knock their prices down again, currently its about £25 a month.

My point is, having competitors in a given market, can help, especailly to stop some from getting greedy. And to me, MS buying publishers and dev studios left, right and centre means they will have most control over games, and their quality.

Don't like it one little bit.

Saying that mind, I haven't really bothered with Blizzard for a long time. Their Warcrft 3 reforged was a mistake and wasn't even handled in house. So what exactly is MS buying here? A long in the tooth WOW game that chould have been put to the pasters, a long time ago. Diablo smight still make money for them if D4 is still happening and will be better then 3. Then again, their is the Blizzard online service. Will that be replaced? or will it be kept?

A lot of unanswered questions. And which publisher / studio will be next? EA? at this rate, MS will be the only big publisher available. And that gives me the shudders. Anyone?
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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by Golden_Gonads » Fri, 21. Jan 22, 15:10

Meh. Microsoft own 30 developers out of literally thousands. Almost all of the ones they've picked up are relatively small, or at least have only a relatively small number of IP's. Bethesda and Activision are the only ones with pretty big libraries, with Bethesda's due more to the fact it was gobbling up little studios for a while.
matthewfarmery wrote:
Fri, 21. Jan 22, 14:03
So what exactly is MS buying here? A long in the tooth WOW game that chould have been put to the pasters, a long time ago. Diablo smight still make money for them if D4 is still happening and will be better then 3. Then again, their is the Blizzard online service. Will that be replaced? or will it be kept?
World of Warcraft, Candy Crush Saga and Call of Duty mean they'll get their money back eventually. Diablo 4 is still in active development and gets monthly or quarterly dev diaries. The XBox CEO has also expressed interest in some of the old mothballed IP's such as Spyro and King's Quest.

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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by Cpt.Jericho » Fri, 21. Jan 22, 20:16

There will be no Diablo 4 with MS on board. They'll call it Diablo 95. :roll:
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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by felter » Sat, 22. Jan 22, 01:13

I honestly don't think there is any issue with Microsoft buying ActiBlizz. If you look at what they have done with their other two big buys, Mojang Studios and Bethesda. When they bought Mojang all the Minecraft players were getting anxious on what Microsoft would do to the title and what did they do, very little, they just left Mojang to get on with it. Same with Bethesda they have not seriously changed anything there either after they took control, personally if it had been me I would have got rid of Todd Howard, but they haven't, they have just left them to get on with it. One thing of note is that since they took over, Bethesda have been actively patching their games, which they avoided doing before, I mean even Morrowind has a small patch nearly every other day now. About the only thing it looks like they are for changing at ActiBlizz is Kotic is out when they take over, but even that's not guaranteed, also I suspect a few of the execs will go as some of them are not on Microsoft's Christmas card list and I just can't see Microsoft keeping them around.

Also, it looks like the reason for Microsoft buying ActiBlizz is because of the trouble they are currently in. When Microsoft approached them initially, ActiBlizz turned them down and went to find someone else who was willing to buy them up, and they went to everyone from Sony to Amazon, but no one was willing to take them up, so they went back to Microsoft resulting in the current takeover offer. So if ActiBlizz had been a half decent company to start with, this would not have happened.
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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by chew-ie » Sat, 22. Jan 22, 09:34

Cpt.Jericho wrote:
Fri, 21. Jan 22, 20:16
There will be no Diablo 4 with MS on board. They'll call it Diablo 95. :roll:
Naah - those days are over. They use a homebrewn / more comprehensible sequence for their version numbers now (7, 10, 11, ...)

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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by fiksal » Thu, 27. Jan 22, 04:43

At least it's not Disney and Lucas Arts case.

Blizzard folks are there and are apparently optimistic.
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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by felter » Tue, 1. Feb 22, 04:54

So it is not just Microsoft that are buying up big name studios, Sony PlayStation have just announced they are buying Bungie for 3.6 Billion Dollars. Their intention is to keep Bungie games as a multiplatform studio, where Microsoft are going more exclusive with their acquisitions.
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Re: Microsoft buys Blizzard

Post by mr.WHO » Tue, 1. Feb 22, 07:42

Anyone else think 2022 will be the year of buy-out and merges?

AAA will canibalize itself, but thank god there are indie games and there is some rebound of quality AA titles.

BTW that reminds me that last year marketing spinners tried to create new category of games better than AAA (4x A ?) but everyone laught at them due to how ****** current AAA titles are.

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